CU Boulder’s nonpartisan series, Federal Governance and Higher Education engages faculty, staff, students and the public in discussions about the intersection of higher education and federal policy. Launched in spring 2025 by the Office of the Chancellor and campus shared governance groups, the series has explored executive authority, universities’ role in politics, and academic freedom.

Through a combination of in-person and Zoom programs, asynchronous whiteboards and campus collaborations, the series equips the CU Boulder community to understand, navigate and influence a rapidly evolving policy landscape. This fall’s 2025 sessions focus on the implications of federal legislation and the power of collective action.

The following interview with Elias Sacks, associate professor of religious studies and Jewish studies, and the lead organizer of the series from the Office of Faculty Affairs, previews year two of the series.

What is this year’s Federal Governance and Higher Education series designed to do? How does it help the campus community?

The goal of this nonpartisan series is empowerment through education. More than half a year into the second Trump administration, the sheer volume and pace of events relating to the federal government and higher education can feel overwhelming: every week seems to bring a new policy, a new court case, a new legislative proposal or some other new development. 

Our series offers resources to illuminate this volatile political and legal landscape. There’s a vast amount of expertise in the CU Boulder community and throughout the CU system, and our aim is to draw on that knowledge to equip faculty, staff, students and members of the public to understand and navigate the rapidly changing world around us.

This is why we’ll have a program on Sept. 30 entitled “The 'Big Beautiful Bill' and Beyond: Federal Legislation and Higher Education”: this panel will examine recent and (potential) future legislation regarding higher education and what all of it means, concretely, for institutions and individuals. This is also why we’ll have a program on Oct. 28 entitled “Collective Action and Higher Education: Prospects and Perils”: this conversation will explore possibilities for collective action across academia.

It’s a difficult moment for many faculty across the CU system and the nation. What do you want people to come away from this year’s series thinking about?

More than anything, I hope that faculty, staff and students come away knowing that they are neither alone nor powerless. Recent developments regarding higher education can seem so momentous that they often leave me feeling small in comparison—as if none of us will ever know enough, or be influential enough, to make a difference.

Part of what animates our series is a conviction that this isn’t actually the case. All of us are part of vibrant academic communities—at CU Boulder, within the CU system, at institutions across Colorado, and through disciplines, networks and professional groups in North America and beyond. The knowledge, creativity and passion in these communities is tremendous, and our series seeks to provide access to these resources—to ensure that all of us have the information and connections we need to play a role in shaping the future of higher education.

You’re doing some whiteboards this year. What are these quick-hit informative pieces designed to do?

There’s far more going on in the world and far more expertise present in the CU Boulder community and the CU system than we could ever hope to cover in a series of Zoom and in-person programs. To ensure that we’re addressing as many topics and elevating as many voices as possible, we’ll be building a library of short, 5-10 minute “whiteboards”—recorded presentations by faculty and staff experts on topics ranging from research funding to federal data collection to the rule of law. 

You can view an example on our Federal Governance and Higher Education page, focusing on safety and scholarship—on what to do if you or your colleagues are targeted for harassment or intimidation because of your research, creative work, teaching or academic service. Stay tuned for more presentations as the semester moves forward.

As a religious studies professor, how are you thinking about this moment in American life and in the life of CU Boulder?

I study Jewish philosophy and theology (and religious thought more generally), and one of my interests is the history of anti-intellectualism. I’m interested both in figures who are critical of science, philosophy and other forms of rigorous intellectual inquiry, and in responses to such voices—in thinkers who insist that these forms of knowledge are actually beneficial for, and even crucial to, religious and civic life.

It feels like there’s a considerable degree of resonance between the long history of hostility to intellectual inquiry on the one hand, and our contemporary moment on the other: we live in a time of attacks on higher education, science and many other forms of expertise. Yet while these historical echoes sometimes leave me disheartened, they also provide me with hope. 

For every anti-intellectual voice in a religious or political community, we also find, in that same community, a defender of intellectual inquiry. For example, I’m spending time right now researching a nineteenth-century eastern European Jewish thinker—Nachman Krochmal—who devoted much of his life to the task of cultivating habits of questioning and philosophical curiosity among his contemporaries, even though he feared that many of those individuals were hostile to such efforts.

For me, these sorts of historical cases serve as reminders both that anti-intellectualism is real, and that there are strategies for responding to it. We can’t assume that friends, neighbors and the public writ large will automatically accept the value of higher education; but instead of giving rise to despair, this realization should give rise to determination, motivating us to make the case for why what we do matters. We can learn from earlier efforts to defend the value of intellectual inquiry, drawing on the lessons of the past to shape the present and the future.